The sale of financially-troubled East Coast-based vegetable processor Cedenco Foods to a Japanese company has been approved by the Overseas Investment Office (OIO).Despite being one of New Zealand's biggest fruit and vegetable processors, Cedenco was put
The sale of financially-troubled East Coast-based vegetable processor Cedenco Foods to a Japanese company has been approved by the Overseas Investment Office (OIO).
Despite being one of New Zealand's biggest fruit and vegetable processors, Cedenco was put into receivership by ANZ National Bank last November, after it defaulted on $46 million owed to the bank and $4.7m to unsecured creditors.
The company's Australian affiliates SK Foods Australia, Cedenco JV Australia and SS Farms Australia were also placed in receivership at the time, reportedly owing the New Zealand arm of the business $11 million.
Cedenco has now been bought by CDC Foods Ltd, which is owned by Imanaka Ltd, a Japanese importer and exporter of food, housing and chemical products.
Imanaka - a major customer of Cedenco - needed approval to acquire the factory's 10.94 hectares of land in Gisborne and intends to continue running the business, the OIO said today in a summary of its decision. It did not release the price paid.
In addition to processing vegetables and fruits into powders, aseptic pastes and purees, block frozen purees, UHT purees and free-flow frozen products, Cedenco has also packed and traded fresh and processed fruit and vegetables, and some packaged food products for retail markets.
At the time of receivership, both SK Foods in the US and Cedenco were owned by a Salyer family trust, which acquired the Gisborne-based company in 2003.
The American arm of SK Foods became the subject of a major controversy after its former chief executive Frederick Scott Salyer, was arrested in the US in February on racketeering and corruption charges related to a scheme to quash competition for his tomato processing firm and sell SK Foods' tomato products at inflated prices.
In May last year, Cedenco managing director Richard Lawrence said the NZ company operated with separate banking, governance and management to SK Foods which then belonged to Cedenco's owner, the family trust of Mr Sayler.
The East Coast region has 30 or 40 grower groups supplying Cedenco, and receivers ensured they were paid for the crops such as tomatoes, corn, peas, and pumpkin, so that he company could continue trading with the help of its 88 fulltime staff, and 410 seasonal workers in New Zealand.
